Sturgeon Spearing Daily Report: Day 14 February 26, 2016
Winnebago System Sturgeon Spearing Enthusiasts:
Only two more days remain before another sturgeon spearing season closes on Lake Winnebago. Today’s harvest of 11 sturgeon brings the season total to 375 fish on Lake Winnebago (682 for the Winnebago System). The northern stations continue to lead the way with 6 fish registered at Stockbridge Harbor and 4 fish registered at Payne’s Point. The largest fish of the day was 64.1“ and 80.4 pounds, registered at Payne’s Point by Robert Drexler (photo). That name (or photo) may sound familiar to some as Robert and his son (Derek) were highlighted on page 8 of the 2016 Sturgeon Spearing Regulation Pamphlet. The father and son Duo had both harvested fish out of the same shack on the last day of the 2015 season (photo included). Congratulations to Robert on another successful season!
In a report earlier this week, I commented on the prevalence of diet items observed in sturgeon stomachs sampled in 2016, while also mentioning that a more detailed report would be coming out later in the week. Well as promised, I am including two reports and one publication to today’s email update. The first document is actually a vignette that I drafted during the 2015 spearing season, and describes the sampling conducted to monitor trends in abundance of the two primary forage items for lake sturgeon in the Winnebago Pool Lakes (gizzard shad and lake fly larvae). We had not yet analyzed the contents of stomachs collected in 2015 at the time this was distributed. However, those results, along with diet results from 2016, are included in the 2nd attached document. This document describes the diet results of the 2015 and 2016 seasons in detail, while also comparing these results to the 1994, 2013, and 2014 seasons. The third document is a peer-reviewed publication describing the carbon sources of lake sturgeon in Lake Winnebago (Stelzer et al. 2008). I hope you enjoy the wealth of information that is present in these documents.
Only two more days of the 2016 sturgeon spearing season! Good luck to everyone who plans to take part in the final days of the season!
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Ryan Koenigs
Senior Fisheries Biologist / Winnebago System Sturgeon Biologist
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
625 E County Rd. Y, Suite 700
Oshkosh, WI 54901
Phone: (920)303-5450
Fax: (920)424-4404
Ryan.koenigs@wisconsin.gov